Centenaries - whole and half

[Mayerling]

Was Agnes guilty?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96B_Q6K7GUY

I can't answer - maybe it was a fair cop!

[sdreid]

Was Agnes guilty?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96B_Q6K7GUY

[Mayerling]

Yep all cats are the devil in disguise.

The witch's cat was usually named "Pyewacket", like Kim Novak's in the film, "Bell, Book, and Candle" with Jimmy Stewart, Jack Lemmon, Elsa Lanchester, and Ernie Kovaks.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

I think that or just an unlucky accident.

No, sorry GUT. It took complicated investigations and litigation goint into the 1940s (the rise of Nazi Germany and the Second World War interrupted this process), but it was proven to be German sabateurs. By the way, if you go to Liberty Island (formerly Bedloe's Island) on a visit to New York City, and look at the back of the Statue of Liberty, there are some minor scars left from the explosion due to shrapnel from the armaments which flew into the statue (Black Tom Island was directly in back of the statue). The explosion was heard all over Manhattan, Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens (possibly also in the Bronx) and caused many windows in Manhattan to be blown out by the blast.

Jeff

[GUT]

450 years ago - 1566 July 29 - In England, Agnes Waterhouse is hanged for causing the death by bewitchment of William Fynne. Her case contained many bizarre elements including a reputed talking cat named Satan.

50 years ago - 1966 July 29 - After entering New Jersey's Riverdell Hospital for routine gall bladder surgery, Ira Holster, 64, dies unexpectedly. Ira was one of at least nine noncritical patients to die mysteriousy in the last eleven months at the facility. Dr. Mario Jascalevich was put on trial for murdering some of these with curare but was acquitted, leaving the cases unsolved. The doctor then returned to his native Argentina and died there in 1984.

Yep all cats are the devil in disguise.

[GUT]

100 years ago - 1916 July 30 - A blast rocks the Black Tom ammunition depot in Jersey City, killing seven and injuring hundreds. Several groups have been looked at but the main culprits were determined to be German saboteurs.

I think that or just an unlucky accident.

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1916 July 30 - A blast rocks the Black Tom ammunition depot in Jersey City, killing seven and injuring hundreds. Several groups have been looked at but the main culprits were determined to be German saboteurs.

[sdreid]

450 years ago - 1566 July 29 - In England, Agnes Waterhouse is hanged for causing the death by bewitchment of William Fynne. Her case contained many bizarre elements including a reputed talking cat named Satan.

50 years ago - 1966 July 29 - After entering New Jersey's Riverdell Hospital for routine gall bladder surgery, Ira Holster, 64, dies unexpectedly. Ira was one of at least nine noncritical patients to die mysteriousy in the last eleven months at the facility. Dr. Mario Jascalevich was put on trial for murdering some of these with curare but was acquitted, leaving the cases unsolved. The doctor then returned to his native Argentina and died there in 1984.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1966 July 27 - Brenda Sue Brown vanishes after walking her younger sister to school. Later in the day, the nude and beaten body of the eleven-year-old was found in some woods near Shelby, North Carolina. A bloody palm print was found on one of the girl's shoes but police have not been able the match it, leaving the case unsolved.

[Mayerling]

100 years ago - 1916 July 22 - A suitcase bomb explodes at the Preparedness Day parade in San Francisco killing 10 and wounding 40. Two labor leaders were convicted of the murders but later evidence of perjury at their trials led to them being pardoned. There were never any other convictions in the case.

The conviction of Billings and Moody for the Preparedness Day bombing took years of fighting in the courts to undue - they weren't pardoned until 1939. The only book on the case I know of ("The Mooney Case" by Richard H. Frost) suggests that the bomb might have been the plant of a West Coast German saboteur (that same year a German saboteur had planted a bomb that destroyed arms and ammunition at a depot on "Black Tom Island" in New Jersey, behind the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor).

Jeff

[sdreid]

100 years ago - 1916 July 22 - A suitcase bomb explodes at the Preparedness Day parade in San Francisco killing 10 and wounding 40. Two labor leaders were convicted of the murders but later evidence of perjury at their trials led to them being pardoned. There were never any other convictions in the case.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1966 July 17 - In North Carolina, Vernon Shipman, Charles Glass and Louise Shumate disappear. Five days later, the beaten and stabbed bodies of all three were found in an isolated area. Shipman and Glass were gay partners but neither man had any known connection to Ms. Shumate. The murders are still unsolved although an escaped criminal, now deceased, named Edward Thompson Jr. has been mentioned as a possible suspect.

[sdreid]

50 years ago - 1966 July 13 - In the late evening, Richard Speck forces his way into a Chicago townhouse and by the following morning has raped, tortured and murdered eight student nurses who lived there. The sole survivor was a nurse who hid under a bed and she later identified Speck as the murderer. Speck, who had almost certainly murdered another woman in April of this year, was eventually sent to prison for a life term and died there in 1991.

[sdreid]

Dr. Warder had appeared as an expert witness in several poisoning cases (including as a defense expert in the case of Dr. William Palmer in 1856). Due to his suicide (which prevented any trial on the merits of the suspicions against him regarding his three wives) the case against Dr. Warder is not recalled, unlike Palmer's, Smethurst's, Pritchard's, and Lamson's.

Jeff

Thanks Jeff-you can't get a much more "expert" witness than that!

[Mayerling]

150 years ago - 1866 July 12 - Dr. Alfred Warder takes his own life by drinking prussic acid. His suicide was to avoid being charged in an English court with the murders of three of his wives by poison.

Dr. Warder had appeared as an expert witness in several poisoning cases (including as a defense expert in the case of Dr. William Palmer in 1856). Due to his suicide (which prevented any trial on the merits of the suspicions against him regarding his three wives) the case against Dr. Warder is not recalled, unlike Palmer's, Smethurst's, Pritchard's, and Lamson's.

Jeff